QUATTRO CANZONI POPOLARI for string quartet and electronics

QUATTRO CANZONI POPOLARI for string quartet and electronics was commissioned by the Xenia Ensemble for the Estovest Festival 2014 as part of a project dedicated to the relationship between contemporary and folk music, a theme which has always been of interest to me. Particularly it is a work inspired to the traditions of the western valleys of Piedmont towards the border with France, connected to the Occitan and Provençal traditions. Part of my family comes from there and it was an ideal opportunity for me to delve into the folk music of that area and in my roots, (re)discovering a forgotten inheritance of deep importance. The Fondazione Revelli of Cuneo, partners in the project, put their archive at my disposal, especially the recordings made in the early ‘70s by Nuto Revelli (*) in which the older members of the community recounted, in song and verse, of a mysterious and harsh world where they struggled to survive in terrible conditions and in wars, but where ‘singing’ was deemed an essential element, a relief of emotions, a cathartic ritual. There are three different semantic layers in QUATTRO CANZONI POPOLARI that move in parallel directions: the first is the direct testimony of the voices, also including that of Revelli, that tell a ‘micro’ story of just a few words, presenting a far away, almost disappeared world of which there are only a few shreds left; the second is represented by original music sources and ancient melodies in the Provençal and Piedmontese dialects, the real ‘singing’ one can say; while the last is ‘documental’, where I elaborated and overlaid some of the recorded songs, as in a kind of memory ‘ganglion’ from which I took the material to compose the piece. The three dimensions are grafted ‘polyphonically’ into one another to create a composite musical organism and the ensuing relationship between the string quartet and electronics is a dialogue where one becomes the extension of the other, like two different worlds that observe and interact reciprocally to the point of transfiguration, one into the other.

(*) Benvenuto ‘Nuto’ Revelli (1919-2004) was an Italian writer, military officer and partisan.